Spiral, maybe I'm not understanding your predicament but I think you might be making it more complicated for yourself. i.e. Every month the bank credits me with my salary. That goes into the income bucket. When I pay a credit card payment, I don't use transfers, (but then again, I don't download credit card statements as I'm trying to pay them off). When I make a cc payment, I'm in my regular checking account. When I have the bank download for that account, and find a cc payment, I make the Payee the credit card name, the type is "withdrawal," the bucket is "Debt Repayment" and then a Memo if I use it for that account. That amount comes out of what I have budgeted for debt repayment, out of that bucket and its total goes down. Perhaps if you try using Transactions rather than transfers/dragging, it'll make more sense. I'm not planning to use the transfer ability until I have a better handle on the basics. I hope I'm making sense.
Karen On 1-Jan-09, at 5:10 PM, SpiralOcean wrote: > > Checking $400 > Credit Card -$100 > Salary $200 > > So you are saying, > to pay off a balance on a credit card: > Create a transfer from checking to credit card (I dragged checking to > credit card). > Checking $300 > Credit Card $0 > Salary $200 > > Go to the Checking Account, look for the transfer, drag it to a bucket > called Credit Card Balance Payment. > Checking $300 > Credit Card $0 > Salary $200 > Credit Card Balance Payment Bucket $-100 > > Go to the Salary income, drag it to the Credit Card Balance Payment to > pay out of my salary so that the Credit Card balance Payment has a $0 > balance. > Checking $300 > Credit Card $0 > Salary $100 > Credit Card Balance Payment Bucket $0 > > This gave me the correct amount. > > There are a lot of steps there, and it concerns me that I may forget > to do something and not know that I have less money in my checking > account than I thought I did. > > If transfers should always be flowed from the outgoing payment, a > suggestion is to show the outgoing transfer as 1 transaction in the > Unassigned smart bucket. This would help me remember that I need to > do something with that transfer, otherwise my money may be off. > > Thank you for the assistance. > > On Jan 1, 12:06 pm, Kevin Hoctor <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Jan 1, 2009, at 12:26 PM, SpiralOcean wrote: >> >> >> >>> Just set up new accounts today. A checking and a credit card. >> >>> I put in an initial balance in the checking and credit card. For >>> example purpose: >>> Checking $400 >>> Credit Card $100 >> >>> I took my initial starting balance in my checking account and placed >>> it into the income bucket of salary. >>> Salary $400 >> >>> I created buckets, assigned monthly allocations, and flowed the >>> cash. >>> The amount of money in the Salary bucket went down as expected: >>> Salary $200. >> >>> Checking $400 >>> Credit Card $100 >>> Salary $200 >> >>> I paid off my credit card by dragging from my checking into the >>> credit >>> card: >> >>> Checking $300 >>> Credit Card $100 >>> Salary $200 >> >>> This is a bit scary to me because my Salary staid the same. But I >>> should have $100 left to allocate in the Salary? >> >>> I went to the transfer smart bucket, and dragged that transfer to my >>> salary bucket and the salary bucket went down by $100. But only >>> if I >>> dragged the transfer from my checking account. If I dragged the >>> transfer from my credit card account then my salary went up $100. >> >>> This is scary to me because I don't feel I can trust how much >>> money is >>> in the salary bucket to allocate? >> >>> Is there something I did wrong here? >> >> If you have a balance on your credit card that you are paying off, >> you >> should use a bucket like "Debt Repayment" and flow your outgoing >> payment (transfer) through that. This way you'll have to flow money >> from your Salary bucket to that expense bucket. >> >> If you purchase something on the credit card and that purchase gets >> assigned to a bucket and you have filled that bucket with money from >> the Salary bucket, then your payment (transfer) doesn't need to be >> assigned to any outgoing bucket because you are just moving money >> from >> one account to another and the categorizing of that payment was done >> with the purchase. >> >> So in summary: >> 1. Payments on credit cards for existing balances need to be >> assigned to an expense bucket because they are not for a current >> purchase, whereas… >> >> 2. Payments on credit cards for current purchases do not need a >> bucket assignment because the purchase is tracking the cash flow. >> >> Peace, >> >> Kevin Hoctor >> [email protected] >> No Thirst Software LLChttp://nothirst.comhttp:// >> kevinhoctor.blogspot.com > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "No Thirst Software User Forum" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/no-thirst-software?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
